


A Farewell to the Flesh

by bauble



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 21:34:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19048873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bauble/pseuds/bauble
Summary: Cask of Amontillado AU





	A Farewell to the Flesh

“You mustn’t be late.” The words rolled from my lips only to be swallowed by the clatter of the crowd around us. “I am certain there are others capable of translating—"

“Another to translate? No no.” Castiel swayed against me, breath laden with wine and carelessness. “What if they are liars or fools who know not of what they speak? No, I simply cannot allow this—I must go myself.”

“But you mustn’t be late,” I repeated, staring down into guileless blue eyes, their gaze only slightly out of focus. “He would never forgive me if you were.”

“I won’t be late.” Castiel waved his hand in the direction of the clock tower, partially visible through the twilit fog at the end of the street. “A plaque, you said? I’ll have more than enough time.”

“It is in the catacombs,” I warned. “There is a chill the likes of which you have never felt before.”

“I don't frighten easily,” Castiel replied as he took my arm. “Sam, you underestimate me--as usual.”

I bestowed upon him my fondest smile, resisting the urge to tear myself from his presumptuous grip and kick him to the ground. “And you underestimate the fury my brother will direct at me if I'm responsible for your tardiness.”

“He need not wait if we set off now.” Castiel tugged on my arm and I let him pull me through the crowd. “In the Avellino Quarter, you said?”

“Beneath Santa Croce.” I slipped a leather mask over my face. None of the satisfaction I felt would be shown in my features. 

Castiel fancied himself a purveyor of all manner of ancient, dead things—chief among them languages. Though it pained me to admit, he was not, in fact, not wholly dull of mind despite his astounding lack of sense in worldly affairs. At first I had suspected that his naiveté, like so many other aspects of _la vita del circo_ , was merely an act—an illusion to lure marks too foolish to hold fast their guards in the presence of azure eyes and sweet mouths. But as days passed and I watched my brother grow more entranced with this creature, I came to realize that there was no illusion at all. In spite of the cynicism and disillusionment that pervaded Castiel’s circus troupe, somehow he had managed to avoid inheriting either their cunning or their suspicion.

We walked through crowds that grew thin, nobility cavorting with peasants as equals behind masks. Men and women pressed themselves into darkened archways, fell to their knees in alleys, gave themselves over to debauchery. All the while, fiddlers played on and on and on.

I allowed Castiel to guide me down the avenue to where Santa Croce stood, solemn in silence. “It will be cold,” I warned again, putting my arm across the entrance as if I meant to block him. “It will be dank and wet, and I would not want you staining your costume.”

“I hardly think Dean will mind a little dirt or damp.” Castiel laughed too loudly, leaning heavily against the doorframe in his green and blue parti-striped ensemble. Though I bristled internally at the proprietary way he uttered Dean’s name, I directed my lips to curve up in a smile.

“He will be eager to free you from the shackles of your wet prison,” I said. Perhaps too many of my teeth were bared, but Castiel noticed not, laughing delightedly once more. 

I was forced to concede that he was handsome enough like this, red of the setting sun burnishing dark hair which fell becomingly into his eyes. He was certainly not the least physically appealing of Dean’s bedmates. Were I possessed of the same insatiable appetite for flesh that compelled my brother, I suppose I might have found Castiel—with his narrow body and contortionist abilities—alluring. 

But there was only one man I wanted on this night. The rest of the universe could ripen and rot for all I cared.

“Let us proceed.” Castiel pushed against the heavy oak door, hinges squealing as it swung open. “The Enochian awaits!”

I followed him in and discreetly shut the door behind us; Castiel was too soaked in brandy and giddiness to notice. We picked up two torches and lit them. “It’s this way,” I said, pointing down the corridor to a set of carved stone stairs.

As we made our way downstairs, Castiel coughed, once, twice--the cold already biting at his flushed neck. 

“We must go back,” I said while Castiel continued to cough in the glow of the crackling flame. “This threatens to freeze us alive, and you are unwell.”

“No no." He pulled from his pocket a handkerchief, white edged in blue, and pressed it to his mouth. 

It brought to mind the last time I had seen his lips parted like that, pressed against the straining material of my brother’s trousers over his groin. They’d thought I was asleep and blocked by the dying light of the campfire from any unruly sights or sounds that slipped despite their best efforts to be silent. But I had grown expert in the ways of feigning sleep while Dean entertained guests over the years, and had watched surreptitiously, disgust curling in my belly, as Castiel pleasured my brother with abandon. 

“But you are unwell,” I protested.

“It is nothing,” Castiel said, tucking his handkerchief in his pocket. “Come, and I will translate for you this mysterious message left in a house of the dead.”

“Very well,” I agreed, with a great show of reluctance. We continued downwards, air around us growing ever more stagnant and thin, making the flames of our torches sputter as Castiel did. “You are a stubborn man.”

“Stubborn, yes.” Castiel smiled over his shoulder at me like a sweet, dumb child. “But also eager to help a friend.”

“The word 'friend' fails to convey what you mean to me,” I said as we came to the bottom of the stairs. Niches filled with bones lined the tunnel in before us. “I will forever be indebted to you for saving Dean’s life.”

“It was nothing,” Castiel replied, seeming unfazed by the presence of human remains. “I should thank that ghost for bringing me and Dean together.”

“Indeed,” I said. It had been the troubled spirit of a little girl that had drawn us to the circus in the first place. Dean had slept with a red-haired woman, Anna, who juggled and heard voices. She had begged us to free the girl’s spirit from the tent in which it was trapped, a constant presence no matter where the troupe traveled. A simple matter, that, handled in less than a day. Anna invited us to stay to watch the show and we agreed--a decision I would come to regret every day of my life after.

That evening we saw Castiel perform his high wire act. Dean had been transfixed, Castiel’s visage stern nearly a hundred feet off the ground, with shadow and light arranged behind him in a manner that almost resembled wings. 

I should have taken Dean’s arm and left. But I was careless, arrogant. I thought it would be yet another of Dean’s short-lived fancies, another novelty to add to his bedroll’s collection. While most of his conquests faded from my memory, there were a few that would be immortalized forevermore: the woman who measured barely three feet tall, the man whose dick had rivaled that of the troupe’s elephant in size, and the man who revealed a pair of large breasts bound beneath a corset. Over time, Dean developed a taste for the occasional oddity, for something that defied definition; Castiel had seemed so plain amongst them.

We sank into silence and I caught a glimpse of Castiel’s usual grace as he yawned, signaling that he was nowhere near as drunk as he had been before. This, combined with the way he scanned the surroundings as if trying to commit the route to memory, concerned me.

“How long have you been with your troupe?” I asked, searching for a subject to distract him.

“My entire life. Zachariah found me at the end of a show one night, swaddled in warm blankets upon the ground. They waited for someone to appear and claim me, but no one came. And so they took me in as one of their own.”

“Once you were grown, you could have left,” I said, surprised by the answer. Castiel was healthy, fit, and strong; nothing about his outward appearance would dog him in normal society--unlike many of his circus kin. “You could have made your own way.”

“Perhaps,” Castiel said thoughtfully. “But I did not want to.”

“No?” I could think of few things worse than traveling aimlessly in a caravan filled with the misfits and rejects of society, performing for crowds that mocked as easily as they cheered.

“I follow my troupe for the same reason you follow Dean,” Castiel said, and I felt my heart seize in my chest. Surely, his mind was still too slowed by spirits and revelry to begin to guess at my carefully laid schemes. “They are my family.”

I disguised a shudder of relief as a shiver from the cold. “Of course.”

“Are we nearly there yet?” Castiel asked, question echoing throughout the long, tenebrous chamber, startling some rats scurrying along the walls and floor.

“Only a bit further,” I reassured him, putting a hand on his shoulder and squeezing a touch too tightly. “My brother awaits, after all.”

Castiel smiled at me as if we were co-conspirators on a grand adventure. I could see now, for the first time, precisely what had charmed Dean and led us down this road.

It had been Castiel’s idea to come to this city’s Carnival, part of a conversation that they’d assumed was too late and low for me to hear. “We’re going to the City of Isles,” Castiel had whispered in between hushed kisses. “It is the season of Carnival.”

“I thought your ringleader hated cities?” Dean replied, low and amused. “Too many mundanes and fools, I believe he said.”

“But that is why we go now,” Castiel responded. “Behind a mask and costume we are as they are—hidden from view, hidden from judgment.”

“Who are you hiding?” Dean had murmured, shifting in their shared bedroll. “Is there someone else you wish to be?”

“Come with me and find out,” Castiel had replied, voice laden with promise, and so we had. I should have protested more, prevented Dean from furthering this infatuation, but I’d been curious about Carnival myself. A mistake to indulge that curiosity.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Castiel asked, jarring me out of my momentary lapse into memory.

“Of course,” I said. The torchlight cast Castiel's face in a golden glow reminiscent of the mask he’d worn that first night of Carnival. That night when everything had changed.

He had brought us to the costumer responsible for his troupe’s ensembles, a bent old woman with hair the texture of hay. “You are welcome to select whichever you’d like,” Castiel had said, presenting a trunk filled with masks of every shade and size. “For the services you rendered to me and mine.”

“And here I thought I’d already received my reward,” Dean murmured in Castiel’s ear, their hands brushing together too casually.

I could barely contain my revulsion. “My thanks to you,” I said, struggling to keep my voice warm through gritted teeth. I snatched a mask from the top of the pile—a plain leather thing with hardly any adornment—and put it on. 

Dean selected one, too: a _bauta_ half-face mask with intricate, curling silver designs about the eyes, and which left the sumptuousness of his lips free of covering. “What will you be donning?” he asked when Castiel made no move to take one for himself.

“Come with me and find out,” Castiel repeated. I watched with a sickening jealousy as Dean’s eyes grew hungrier for this spectacle called Castiel.

“A secret?” I echoed as we descended deeper into the maze. 

“Yes, and you must promise not to tell Dean before I do,” Castiel replied.

“I assure you that Dean will never know. I vow it.”

“I am leaving the troupe. They leave tonight and I have already told them I will follow no longer.”

I stared at Castiel, dumbfounded, and infinitely grateful that the mask I still wore concealed my shock. “But I thought you said—"

“I know.” Castiel smiled shyly. “I never thought I would. But when Dean asked me to, I—I felt a thing I had never felt before. A thing I would give everything else up to continue feeling.”

“This is—" My mind raced with the realization that Dean had been _conspiring_ behind my back, and it felt as if the catacombs themselves had started shifting beneath my feet. But I reassured myself that it was no matter; this merely confirmed what I had known all along, chased away any stray doubts regarding the plan I had meticulously prepared. “This is good news.”

“Is it?” Castiel peered at me tentatively, searching for the approval only I could bestow.

I produced a small flask from my cloak, opened it, and brushed it across my lips, pretending to drink. “A toast. To celebrating new family!”

“A toast.” The anxious furrow in Castiel’s brow smoothed as he took the flask and drank thoroughly.

We had been walking through a courtyard on the first evening of Carnival, Dean and I, empty but for the circular fountain in the center. There’d been a woman seated by the fountain in a burgundy ball gown, dark ringlets of hair spilling down her back to a corseted waist. Covering her face was a porcelain white mask with painted cupid’s bow lips.

I’d felt more than heard Dean’s breath quicken as we approached her; had inwardly sighed at my brother’s insatiable lust for shapely strangers. But a part of me had been pleased; perhaps this enchantress would help break the spell Castiel had cast upon Dean. 

The woman stood and cast a coquettish glance over her left shoulder before taking a few steps away. A white square of cloth edged in blue fluttered to the ground, and Dean swooped forward to seize it.

“My lady,” he said, clutching the handkerchief like a fawning little boy. “I believe this is yours.”

The woman turned, and it was then I noticed how very tall she was, how sharply her jaw jutted beneath her pale mask. She moved closer to Dean, infinitely graceful and barely an inch shorter than he. Their hands brushed as she took the proffered handkerchief.

“Thank you,” she said. The voice was low--too low, throat bobbing with every syllable, eyes blue behind the delicate mask. I took an instinctive step back at the timbre--the all too familiar voice that belonged not to a woman but a circus aberration. Instead of being revolted by Castiel's bizarre display, Dean had been further entranced, enraptured, _enthralled_.

He seized Castiel for a kiss while I backed away, narrowly avoided tripping over my own feet. They took no notice of me as I left, swept up in each other as they were, Castiel’s mask lying abandoned on the ground.

I didn't see Dean again until the next afternoon. Though he said little, I'd felt a shift in the air, like the indescribable smell of moisture in the ground before clouds opened up for rain.

“This is it,” I said, leading Castiel into a room hardly bigger than a coffin. It contained only one doorway. On the far wall was a mounted plaque, etched with writing, with two iron staples on either side.

“The Enochian!” Castiel exclaimed, stumbling forward to examine it.

“Yes,” I said, watching him sway precariously from side to side.

“It is—a mantra of some sort,” he said, words slurring on his tongue.

“And what does it mean?”

“It means—" Castiel tilted sideways again, leaning heavily against me when I put my arm out to steady him. “Why do I feel—"

“I warned you of the chill,” I chided. “Now, tell me what it says.”

“No one a-attacks me with—with..." Castiel’s eyelids fluttered shut as I allowed his body to sink to the ground.

“Impunity,” I supplied. I left him there in a heap to retrieve the chains and tools I’d hidden in the other room. I secured his arms and legs before beginning to mix the mortar.

The first layer took the longest, laying down the mortar and bricks precisely so they would fuse together in a smooth, unbreakable line. After the second layer, I proceeded at a brisker clip, reaching the twelfth tier before Castiel began to stir.

“What—" Castiel sat up slowly, groaning. “What happened? Why am I—" I continued my bricklaying as he began testing the shackles that bound him. “Sam,” he said, looking up with terror that I could practically taste on my tongue.

“Castiel,” I replied serenely, pressing into place another brick.

“What are you doing?” he asked. I could hear how he was struggling to keep calm. “If this is a joke, I’m afraid I don't understand the punchline.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” I took a white handkerchief edged in blue from my pocket and wiped delicately at my brow. “ _You_ are the punchline.”

“Sam.” Castiel began struggling with the chains in earnest now. “Think of Dean. He’ll be—he’s expecting me.”

“Yes, he is,” I agreed pleasantly, folding the handkerchief and tucking it away again. “I warned you not to be late.”

“Sam.” The clattering of the chains reverberated up and down the halls violently as Castiel thrashed. The wall was too high for me to comfortably look over, alas. “Sam! Let me out of here!”

He began to scream with all his might, threats and pleas for mercy. Combined with the clanking of the chains, it created quite the din, but I worried not. I added my own voice to the chorus, yelling along in counterpoint until at last, there was but one more brick to lay before the wall would be complete.

The noise on his side ceased, and I peered through the hole. By the light of the torch I’d left dying on the ground at his feet, I could see him standing against the wall, shaking and panting, straining against the chains. He looked up at me, sweaty hair falling in front of his terrified eyes and truly, I could not have imagined a sight more beautiful. “For the love of god, Sam,” he whispered.

I removed my black mask and smiled at him. “Yes. For the love of god, Castiel.”

The cacophony stated up again once I sealed the last brick. After tapping the newly created wall in numerous spots to assure myself of its solidity, I walked back through the tunnels to the exit, the noise behind me growing fainter and fainter until I could hear nary a sound at all.

I walked out of the Avellino Quarter into the raucous night. The city was still filled with revelers drinking and dancing, oblivious to the opportunists and criminals who roamed their streets. I made my way to one of the highest spots in the city overlooking the grounds where Castiel’s circus had laid down its stakes. Sure enough, there his troupe was, swarming around deflated tents, efficient in their disappearing act.

Anna walked to the edge of the river and stared back at the city while the others prepared to go. For an instant, I wondered if she could see me from her vantage point, if those voices she claimed to hear had told her of Castiel’s misfortune. But someone called her from the caravan, and she went. I watched as the circus rode away into the forest--hopefully, never to be see again.

Satisfied, I made my way towards a familiar courtyard, ignoring the wandering drunks and lost party-goers. I stopped to pick a bottle off a man who had collapsed face-first in the canal, and splashed some wine on my person before drawing a gulp into my mouth to gargle with. I mussed my clothing and hair to before lurching towards the fountain where Dean awaited.

“Dean!” I slurred as I neared his lonely form. “What are you still doing here?”

Dean smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “Waiting. I suppose Castiel has been waylaid or—lost.”

“I have no doubt that he will arrive,” I said, practically pitching myself into the fountain before Dean chuckled and caught me. I slung an arm around him--ostensibly for balance--and leaned my head against his shoulder, inhaling deeply the familiar scent of him, only slightly tinged with alcohol.

We waited like that until the sun rose. Me pretending to be unconscious, him scanning the courtyard, saying nothing.

“Perhaps he meant noon,” Dean said to himself some time after dawn. I shifted, brushing my lips across the skin where his neck met his shoulder, the contact seeming so inadvertent that he pretended not to notice.

Dean gave up an hour or so after that, angry and exhausted. I followed silently as he stormed through the hungover city to the old circus grounds, empty as I had left them yesterday. “Where—"

I played up my confusion and staggered about, poking at trash, the only mark indicating anyone had ever passed through this field. “Have we gone to the wrong side of the city?”

“No.” Dean frowned. When he wandered a sufficient distance away, I made my way to the spot where Castiel’s tent had once stood, and found a heavy river rock to wrap the white handkerchief around. I dug out the note I had written and wedged it beneath the cloth-wrapped rock, and then walked away, waiting patiently until I heard Dean say, “Sam.”

I joined Dean by the water’s edge, where he stood with the handkerchief crumpled in one hand and the note in his other. “It says: _don’t look for me_ ,” Dean said, and I felt a little piece of my heart break at the pain in his voice. “He left. He just… left.”

“Oh, Dean,” I said, walking towards him carefully, as if he were a wild beast to be broken and tamed. “I’m sorry. So sorry.”

Dean accepted the hand I placed on his shoulder and bowed his head. “I should have guessed,” he muttered, wiping at his cheeks. “I should have known.”

“They come and they go,” I said gently, allowing Dean to hide his tears from me. “You and I—we are the only constant.”

“I know." He pressed the handkerchief to his mouth for a gasping exhale before letting it fall to the ground, where the wind caught it and carried it into the river.

* * * * * *

That evening I bided my time until half past midnight, and then ventured out of the city to stop again at the river. I pulled out my knife and, squinting by the light of the torch I had set down on the soft embankment, cut away all of my hair. The results of my hacking and slashing were no doubt aesthetically poor, but I reassured myself that I would simply pay someone in the morrow to rehabilitate it.

I swathed myself in black from head to toe, and slipped on the gloves I’d purchased earlier at the market to match. To complete my outfit, I put on the black full-face _moretta_ mask I’d had custom made two days ago, and adjusted it against my jaw until it fit perfectly. The curving, feminine features of it pinched at my skin, and breathing through the tiny nostrils in the mask was not the easiest of tasks, but when I saw my reflection in the river—looming, ominous, with the face of a beautiful woman carved in darkness—the results satisfied me.

Once ready, I sought Dean out where he stood in a crowded piazza, drinking heavily with his arm around some elfin woman with hardly a bosom to recommend her. 

I shouldered my way through the crowd until I stood next to him, waiting for his bloodshot gaze to land on me, awaiting a spark of recognition that would foil my entire plot. But the evening was especially dim--the moon but a bare sliver in the sky--and the lanterns hanging all around gave off little light.

I swept forward when his gaze passed over me innocuously, neatly stepping between Dean and the wench, inserting myself in her place. She let out a squeak of protest, but quickly disappeared when I turned the full force of my stare upon her.

Dean, for his part, seemed only moderately aware of what had just taken place. He blinked foggily up at me, his mask slipping off his face. “I was—talking to her,” he said, voice muzzy. But he didn’t move to push me away, even as I backed him up against the wall. “Are you here to rob me?”

I shook my head once, and ran a hand from the center of his chest down to his groin, palming the shape of his half-hard cock through his trousers. He felt precisely as I had imagined he would, and it made me dizzy to be so near him, touching him in all the ways I had dreamt of.

He exhaled deeply and tipped his head back against the wall to stare at me, eyes still unfocused. I would have preferred them sharper, less lost in a haze of bitter abandon, but it would do—for now. “Oh, I see,” Dean said. “And do you have a name?”

I gestured to where the mouth of my mask was painted on, no slit left for speech of any kind.

“Who needs conversation anyway?” Dean asked as he took another swig of his bottle, emptying it before tossing it away on the ground. I slipped a hand beneath his trousers, the feel of his dick not as immediate and raw as I had hoped through the leather of my glove, but there was no point in lingering on what I could not change. Dean grunted in response, eyes slipping shut as he leaned back against the wall, one of my hands planted beside his head while the other worked his cock expertly—putting to use the hundreds of times I’d witnessed him touched intimately before.

His lips were parted slightly, glossy and red in the gloom, and it took nearly all of my willpower not to free myself of my mask and claim his mouth as mine. But I settled for rubbing my thumb over the slit of his dick, hearing the wet squeak of leather covered in his precome, and leaned so close I could breathe in the scent of his hair.

When he came, it was with a satisfied little moan into my ear, and I trembled as my dick grew harder at the sound of it. I brought my dirtied hand to my nose and wished I could lick over the ridges of the leather, taste it mixed with the stickiness of Dean’s come. I settled for inhaling deeply, then pushed my trousers to the ground.

It took barely a press against Dean’s shoulder before he sank to his knees, mouth luscious and open. I paused a moment, wondering whether the expanse of bare flesh I had revealed would prove enough for him to recognize me. Though the idea of all my plans being ruined terrified me, another part of me thrilled at the notion that Dean could have studied my cock as thoroughly over the years as I had studied his--that he knew the lines of my body so well all it took was this to end our game.

But he barely glanced at my cock before taking it into his mouth, and I chased the disappointment away by bringing my glove to my nostrils again, and by reveling in the exquisite, welcoming heat of his mouth. It felt wetter, tighter, _better_ than I had imagined, and I had to remind myself to breathe even as the whole situation made me dizzy with triumph and lust. I wanted nothing more than to moan his name, to let stream forth the string of praises that his every movement inspired in me, but I could not.

Fortunately, I knew I would not have to hold myself in check for much longer. The heat pulsed fast in my veins, and my dick grew larger, more swollen in my darling brother’s perfect mouth. Beneath me, he moaned, eyes closed, and the vibration tingled through my dick like an echo through a darkened tunnel beneath the earth, and it was at that thought that I came, shoving my hand against my masked mouth to muffle the shout.

When the sparks behind my eyes faded to a manageable level, I guided Dean up from his knees so he could lean against me, heavy and still intoxicated. I tenderly wiped the spit and semen from about his mouth while his own dried come flaked off my glove. He seemed so tired and lost in that moment that all I wanted was to gather him up and stroke his hair until he fell asleep, face growing peaceful and relaxed in slumber.

“You are magnificent,” I said, voice muted behind my mask. I watched a flicker of confusion pass through Dean’s eyes as he stared at me, the lust draining away. “Beautiful and perfect in every way.”

“What—" He tried to pull away from my chest but I held on easily, anticipating his every move. “Who—"

“Remember, Dean,” I whispered as I finally pulled off my mask and revealed myself to him. His eyes widened and he struggled against my chest more, reddened lips parting in an invitation I couldn’t resist. I leaned down to claim them and spoke the words straight into his mouth. “They come and they go. You and I—-we are the only constant.”

 

fin


End file.
